Latest news with #Critics
Digital Trends
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Can we all just be normal about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for a second?
Whether or not it actually wins the award come December, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the Game of the Year. No 2025 release has sparked so many long-lasting conversations usually reserved for tentpole releases like Grand Theft Auto or Zelda. It has been gaming's main character for months, standing in as a shining example of what a modern video game should rise to. Yet for all the mainstream conversations that it has generated, so few of them actually seem interested in Clair Obscur. Instead, Sandfall Interactive's critically acclaimed RPG has been submitted as evidence in on-going litigations against what gamers paint as a stale industry in need of new blood. While there are meaningful conversations to have about what game studios can learn from Clair Obscur's success, the way that it has been weaponized and reduced to a piece of confirmation bias in any landscape-shaping argument it fits into leaves me hungry for more substantial dissections of the games we love. Recommended Videos It was clear that Clair Obscur was going to be a big talking point when it launched in April to a wave of glowing reviews. Critics and fans hailed it as a generational RPG that revitalized turn-based combat, delivered an emotional story, and crafted an astonishing original world. 'Game of the Year' talk came fast, which is par for the course when a new game breaks the 90 mark on Metacritic. But the watercooler chats didn't stop there. Soon, mainstream conversations yearned to place it in a broader gaming landscape. Its originality was painted as a shining light in a sea of perceived 'AAA slop.' It wasn't just a good game, but a blueprint for how a boring industry could be saved. Even this very site opined about that immediately following its release. That over-the-top idea only ballooned as the months went on. Sandfall Interactive's slim team size became a talking point. Articles popped up that praised the studio for creating such an accomplishment with only 30 people — a figure that was quickly debunked once critics started adding up all the external developers involved. That didn't stop the disingenuous factoid from setting the stage at Summer Game Fest, where host Geoff Keighly used the number to sell the idea that he was presenting viewers the future of video games. Tons of trailers for smaller games followed, with Keighly often pointing out how many people made them as an indication of quality. My growing frustration with that trend reached a boil this week thanks to a different debate that Clair Obscur has been unwittingly roped into. For years now, some RPG enthusiasts have lamented the death of turn-based games. That anxiety seemed to come most from franchises like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest experimenting with real-time action. Clair Obscur is a loud and proud turn-based game, which made it the perfect spoiler candidate for an industry abandoning a classic way of play. Never mind the fact that turn-based gaming hasn't gone away. Octopath Traveller 2, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio (a game that released just last year to similar praise) have all proved that major studios are still very much invested in the subgenre. And yet, the narrative persisted. It all came to a head during a Square Enix investors call, in which the company reaffirmed its commitment to turn-based games and acknowledged Clair Obscur's existence in the process. According to Automaton, those typical business responses were mistranslated and blown out into a larger story: Clair Obscur's success had convinced Square Enix to start making more turn-based games. Finally, the video game industry was saved. Mission accomplished! Every conversation like this is so riddled with holes that you couldn't get them across a puddle, yet they are inescapable. Fans want it to prove their long-standing theories about the video game industry right and treat its success like an irrefutable data point in every argument. It's not a new phenomenon either; this cycle tends to happen with lots of both successes and failures. Baldur's Gate 3 inspired a wave of talking points about what players actually wanted from games. That line of thinking was met with backlash from developers who cautioned against using a very specific win as a crusade. Black Myth: Wukong became a rejection of Western ideology. Concord was viewed as proof that live service games are dead. I both understand where this comes from, because I'm as guilty of it as anyone. It's fun to search for meta-narratives in the things we care about. I'm a football fan (go Pats) and I love nothing more than creating a story out of a Super Bowl matchup. This year's clash between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles became more exciting to me when I viewed it as the Chiefs needing the win to finally prove they were every bit as good as the Tom Brady era Patriots, but they'd have to beat the giant killers who previously thwarted Bill Belichick at the big game. That added stakes to a matchup I wasn't invested in, even if it was imaginary. This sort of meta-breakdown of video games follows a similar line of thinking. Sandfall Interactive becomes the Eagles circa 2018 in this story. As harmless as that can be in small quantities, its forced nature has become unbearable when trying to navigate conversations around Clair Obscur. It's not enough for it to be a great game. It has to be a masterpiece. It has to be a counterpoint to everything we don't like. It has to be the savior of the RPG genre. What's ironic is that none of those hollow platitudes actually tell us anything about the game itself. Engagement with what Clair Obscur actually has to tell us has taken a backseat to imperfect armchair analysis. That's a shame, because there's meat on that bone. Clair Obscur asks us to think about how we, as a species, push on in the face of mass grief. It's a story of sacrifice, where expedition after expedition fights in the face of extinction. Many die for that cause, but their sacrifices aren't in vain. Each one helps the next party get a little closer, asking us to rethink success and failure in the context of long-term collective action. It's a thematic cousin to Death Stranding and its sequel, games that stress the importance of human connection as a means of making the world easier to navigate in times of crisis. Perhaps that's just as much a reason why Clair Obscur is resonating with players as the fact that it's turn-based or made by an indie studio. There's a familiar trauma in it, as the fictional Gommage and its impact on the world can be connected to the Covid-19 pandemic. We just went through – and are still going through – a period of mass suffering. Those wounds are fresh. I still remember seeing the pop-up morgues on the streets of Brooklyn. I remember watching the infection rates fall and then spike again, ripping any hope I had for an ending from me. I remember how hopeless it all felt. But I also remember how many people put in hard work to stop it together. Even if some people refused to do their part, many masked, stayed home, kept six feet apart, and anything else they could to stop the spread. It was a collective effort built on selfless sacrifice. I feel all that fueling Clair Obscur's emotional resonance. It begs to be discussed, because what is the point of something being a generational classic if we take nothing else from it? One of the only meaningful conversations I've had about Clair Obscur came before it was out. I had been playing it alongside our reviewer, Tomas Franzese, at the time and we dissected its themes together in isolation. We both cooled on it significantly in Act 3, taking issue with its sudden pivot into a meta-reflection on the nature of art and its role as an escape from grief. It felt like a betrayal on its more human focus earlier on; a needless swerve into a piece of art evaluating its own importance. It was a memorable discussion that helped crystallize where I felt Clair Obscur worked best and where it ultimately fell apart. I hope that discussions like that become more common as the hype settles down. Just as I felt turned off by the 'art about art' pivot in Act 3, I am similarly bored by the tedious talk about how Clair Obscur is changing the industry. None of it does anything to honor Sandfall Interactive's vision, even if it is designed to gas the studio up. Real engagement comes from critics like Ian Walker and Kenneth Shepard, who respect the game enough to interpret what it has to say. It comes like podcasts like Girl Mode that aren't afraid to criticize where the story is ineffective. If you love Clair Obscur, really talk about it. Not what it represents, but the actual game in front of you. If you find that you don't have nearly as much to say about it as you do its influence, maybe it's worth questioning whether you love the game or just the idea of it.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Ironheart' Is Tied As The Second Lowest-Scored MCU Show Ever
Ironheart Disney dropped the first three episodes of Ironheart on Wednesday, and while we don't know what actual viewership will be, both critic and audience reviews are coming in. As it stands, Ironheart is tied as the second lowest-scored MCU show, albeit still a ways from the 'rotten' classification that only one series ever has gotten, Secret Invasion. As it stands, and this number has bounced around a little, Ironheart has a 70% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes which would tie it with Echo at the same mark. I am hesitant to consider its audience score valid at this point. It would be in fourth place, but it was provably review-bombed as it sat around a 30% just 20 minutes after release when it was physically impossible to have even watched the first three episodes. Here's the list: I personally did not like the first three episodes, but I've seen a lot more positive audience reactions on social media, more than I envisioned. As pointed out to me, this may be a 'culture divide,' given the show's focus on black culture, which is absolutely something I'll admit could be a blindspot for me, or people like me, judging the show. Ironheart This could also be an Agatha All Along situation where both critic scores and audience scores increase over time. But this is just two weeks of three episodes rather than Agatha doing a lengthy season week-to-week, so long-term increases seem unlikely. We have no real idea if we will see Riri Williams after this. Disney is notorious for one-and-done TV series, and the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday is likely to be so overstuffed I'm not sure she'd appear. Perhaps Sam Wilson's Captain America could recruit her as a new Avenger. No rumors like that have surfaced, however. I maintain Disney did this show dirty with lackluster promotion and what was practically a stealth drop of the series. I do not expect viewership to be terribly good, but again, perhaps that's an underestimation of its appeal. We will likely not have that data for a while, though. We will see what people think of the second half of the series next week, which critics seem to say is better. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
CNN
25-05-2025
- Health
- CNN
Mountaineers scaled Mt. Everest in less than a week with help from an anesthetic gas. Critics warn it's dangerous
Mountaineers usually spend weeks or months acclimating to high altitudes before ascending Mt. Everest. But one group accomplished the feat in less than a week after using an anesthetic gas that critics warn could be dangerous.
Forbes
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Netflix's #1 And #2 Shows Have 100% Perfect Critic Scores Right Now
Secrets We Keep The content factory of Netflix produces so many series that often we can be buried in slop. But at least recently a few shows have emerged with perfect scores from critics, and they're in very different genres. You may want to check one, or both of them, out. The new show that's racked up 100% on Rotten Tomatoes so far is Secrets We Keep, a Danish crime drama set in Copenhagen. Here's the official synopsis of the series: The show has just debuted yet it is already #2 on Netflix's Top 10 list, behind the other 100% rated series, America Manhunt: Osama Bin Laden. The catch for both of these is that there are not that many critic reviews in yet, but of those that are, they are all positive, hence these scores. Secrets We Keep Secrets We Keep is not based on a true story, nor a book, which is a little surprising, given that many of these crime shows are. So that means an original script that no one knows the ending to. It is listed as a miniseries, unsurprisingly, so that means it will not have to scramble for enough views to get a season 2. It's quite short, just six episodes that are around 35 minutes each, meaning this will probably feel like an overly long movie if you binge the entire thing at once, which is no doubt what Netflix wants you to do. Do audiences think it's good? So far it has a 76% score, which is solid enough and better than the Osama Bin Laden series, which instead has a rotten score from fans. Netflix has produced a number of these really great European crime dramas and now it seems like it has another one to add to its collections. Admittedly my favorites are the British ones, however. I will be certainly be checking out The Secrets We Keep, which no doubt can be finished in one afternoon. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
CTV News
08-05-2025
- Politics
- CTV News
Vancouver mayor dodges questions about task force budget
Vancouver mayor dodges questions about task force budget Critics are calling out a lack of transparency over how funding for a police task force was approved, saying the mayor made a backroom decision.
